Re: Driver for Promise PDC42819 SATA/SAS controller

["Mark Nelson" <mdnelson8@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 9:37 PM, Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@it.uu.se> wrote:
> Mark Nelson writes:
>  > On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 9:59 PM, Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@it.uu.se> wrote:
>  > > Mark Nelson writes:
>  > >  > >  > Forgive my ignorance, but does the fact that the T3 controller can also
>  > >  > >  > use SAS disks mean we should be looking for a SCSI driver?
>  > >  > >
>  > >  > > Promise lists only this one partial-source driver for the tx4650,
>  > >  > > and it /is/ a Linux scsi driver.
>  > >  > >
>  > >  >
>  > >  > Oh sorry, I meant to ask should we be looking at an in-kernel
>  > >  > (or fully open source driver) that is a SCSI driver that we could make
>  > >  > work with the T3? So maybe my question is actually: does the
>  > >  > fact that this controller supports SAS disks mean that the
>  > >  > driver for it should be a scsi driver (rather than an ATA driver)?
>  > >
>  > > The candidate Linux drivers would be ata/sata_promise, ata/sata_sx4,
>  > > block/sx8, and scsi/stex. You tried sata_promise, and from looking
>  > > at the PCI IDs I doubt the others are likely to drive the T3.
>  > >
>  > > If you can find an open-source T3 driver in some other operating
>  > > system, like OpenSolaris, Darwin, or some *BSD, then that would be
>  > > great.
>  > >
>  >
>  > Okay, so after trying all of the above drivers you suggested (as
>  > well as a few other SAS drivers I found) I figured I'd try AHCI.
>  >
>  > And it actually works!
>  >
>  > After making the following simple change:
>  >
>  > --- linux/drivers/ata/ahci.c_orig    2008-09-01 18:42:26.000000000 +1000
>  > +++ linux/drivers/ata/ahci.c 2008-09-01 19:41:29.000000000 +1000
>  > @@ -542,6 +542,9 @@ static const struct pci_device_id ahci_p
>  >      { PCI_VDEVICE(MARVELL, 0x6145), board_ahci_mv },        /* 6145 */
>  >      { PCI_VDEVICE(MARVELL, 0x6121), board_ahci_mv },        /* 6121 */
>  >
>  > +    /* Promise */
>  > +    { PCI_VDEVICE(PROMISE, 0x3f20), board_ahci },           /* T3 */
>  > +
>  >      /* Generic, PCI class code for AHCI */
>  >      { PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID, PCI_ANY_ID,
>  >        PCI_CLASS_STORAGE_SATA_AHCI, 0xffffff, board_ahci },
>
> Nice detective work. At least now the chip is usable.
>
> /Mikael
>

Thanks! It still might need a bit of tweaking and input from
the ahci guys but I'm really happy now that I can use those
extra ports.

Mark